


Oaths and Monsters

by Kasan_Soulblade



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: AU, Evil MIM, Gen, Pitch+Sera father/duaghter relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 20:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasan_Soulblade/pseuds/Kasan_Soulblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because monsters weren't held by oaths, and a broken one would be more than repaid.  It started with a war won, and ended in a bid for power.  Both victory and bid were broken, and this would cause the stars to fall.  From graundour and greatness to a world so simple it seemed squalar from where he had been.  </p><p>But there was no going back, only going forward.  </p><p>His hate for MiM was more than justified, but few would listen to the villan, not until after the farce was done and played through in full.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Broken Deal

**Author's Note:**

> A AU and diviant from canon. I took ideas from both the book and the movie 'verses and threw in some thoughts of my own to see how it meshes. I'm playing this by ear, so we'll see where it goes. Thanks for reading in advance.
> 
> KS

“We had an agreement… you and I, the terms were simple.  I would, with strict controls, set the dark to menace those outside your favor.  How many have died?”

“Dissidents, all of them!  Liars, and pariah, and venomous malcontents-“

The rebuttal ended in a croak as the insubstantial pressed against the barrier of plausibility and became reality.  Shadows thickened into a noose.  Their owner, as dark as his tools, did not stand out, save for a flash of silver that served in lue of a smile.

“It’s curious… with the worlds all open to me… what one can see.  I don’t have to be in one place to know what’s happening…  Wherever there is the barest skein of shade, I can be…”

XXX

It had fallen apart so spectacularly.

Never mind the slowness of it all, the final rush at the end, before the end, that coherent span before the collapse, poised on the tip of catastrophe the encounter hung.

They’d thought it was the end, the tipping point.  Thus armed with such declarations they pounded up the steps that had once been familiar, welcome.  All gold and glowing, armor artfully dented, faces plainly harried.  They marched up those familiar steps thinking they belonged.

Never mind the properties change of hands.

It was an odd house now.  Even as they pressed past the threshold they knew, as those always enamored of their own opinion must, that there was strangeness here.  The house was dim, would be no matter when they visited.  Neighbors and the well-meaning whispered of sketchy illumination in each room, that how every night the dark was let in, and each day it’s windows were sealed with shutters and drapes.

Such was distasteful, never mind it was an expression of grief, considering what they fought… Once they passed the threshold the general nodded to his men.  No words needed, they spread out, tearing down the grey and black shrouds and letting the sunlight in.

To that she came.  Belated, and irate, but she’s slipped out from the higher levels where no guest would dare intrude without consent. She ghosted down the stairwell, into the receiving area, and the General checked a grimace at her lack of proper military pace.  Bad manners aside, there were lines never crossed in proper society, so the General and his men while vandalizing (all for her own good) the main entry way, letting blessed light to skew the gloom, they would not ascend.  No she would have to descend, and the ruckus guaranteed she would come where they were gathered.

“What is the meaning of this?”

She looked tired, he noted.  Tired and worn.  The tan of her skin dulled by too much time indoors, glooming had stolen the glow not only of her skin, but of her eyes. Still there was authority to her voice, a firm grim edge that was suited to her place in the larger world.

“Lady Pitchner,” He bowed, after all he was there to serve.  “We were sent here by his majes-“

“Get out.”

To such bite he stiffened, looking at her.  Trying not to see…  His face, his features, his hellish stubbornness, all of him in the woman who he’d left behind to bear his name, his legacy.

“Such trappings… such darkness… does not suit you.”

“Am I not allowed to grieve?”

“Grieving…”

“While not a prevue of the military, it is a fallacy allowed by the civilian population.”  Lady Pitchner strode across the dark blue rug soundlessly, until she stood before him.  The new General answered the woman’s audacity with silence and a stony façade.  And to his lack of motion, or the calling off of his men, she stood.  Unflinching though a loud clatter assured something had broken; the tink-a-link alluded to the breakage being glass.  A window, or so the hiss of breeze seeping through the crevice confirmed and affirmed.  Still, she didn’t start, a promising start, she seemed engrossed in tracing the patterns on his armor with her regard,

Idle, the thought came, he must look like her father, with his golden helm and face guard on.  Ruthlessly the new General squashed that thought.

There was a taint of treason to the whole.

“I am a civilian.”  Lady Pitchner hissed.  “And it is _your_ job to protect civilians, via duty on the front lines and civil services when away from the battlefield.”

Something was torn, a thud, muffled by cloth, a curtain rod and its light blocking drape had been felled.  Such had been their orders, excise the dark, and force her to see reason.  Sunlight was streaming in, reluctant gold to reveal a glory of star hued white and luna mined silver.  She grimaced at the ingress, looked at him fair features twisted foul.

“How sternly you uphold your duty.”

Of the two she seemed to be the more reasonable.

And though the last was wholly treasonous he couldn’t banish it.

“My duty, lady, isn’t complete.  Will you come, take your proper place?”

“No.”

He drew his sword, and there was no shock to her gaze, no fear, only a dull realization that now was the time of her death.

And he remembered…

The General babbling about how warm, how friendly, how alive his daughter was.  How though hardly stiff and straight and adhering to formation (a soldier’s only love) there was something to be said of her tender willies, bright smiles, and as she grew older her disordered charms only grew in his eyes.  And perhaps not just in his eyes.  For there had been a few men about who’d tried to woo her, and met the bite of her father’s ire as a rebuff when they couldn’t pass muster. The flat of his scythe had been employed when one ardent suitor hadn’t gotten the subtle hint of a dressing down at full voice.

And though it had caused a scandal, his adoration, his viciousness such brought, he was too valuable to properly rebuke.  Their stalwart solider, strategies flawless against the dark, their hopes had been slung about his shoulders and he hadn’t broken like those before…  So what scandal his passions had unleashed had been muffled.   The evidence of such had been destroyed.

He wondered how they would destroy such evidence of what was to come.

One word, and order, and the destruction stopped.  One motion and his blade sunk home, drag up, one twist…

It wasn’t like killing darklings.  There wasn’t blood when killing the fey.  This… with this there was red rush, and a vile smell of innards exposed, and the lingering sense of “this could be wrong”.

The body fell with a thump.  She’d died as she lived. Traitorous, silent, resolute.  Maimed but whole, it was all the mercy he could afford her, to spare those features a disfigurement so that those few who might care for her would recognize the body.

Turning about, red cloak snapping, golden armor made luminous by the suns rising rays, he grunted at the glare.

“Move out.”

XX

“If you thought, just for one moment, that I would not notice you are madder than they made me.”

So hissed the beast, the dark that stole light.  The shadows tightened their grip, there was nothing organic to the touch, nothing of pulse of fingers, or warmth, it was a grip without tactile sensation save that which it denied.  He croaked, groped for hands that weren’t, scratching his own skin as he tried, and failed, to gain some slack.

“Oh, Tsar… My liege, my lord, my oldest friend…. We’ve been in this for so long…  So let’s forgo formalities in this little dispute between us two?”  The voice crooned into the curl of his ear.

As his vision greyed, all he could hear was the hammering of his old heart, still past it’s thunder he pushed out one word.  Throwing down pride and facades of power, he begged.

“Mercy.”

There was some slack.  A loosening even as the fangs drew nearer, snapping at the very tip of his nose.

“You.”  That scentless, heatless voice hissed. “Would beg me mercy?  After the death of my own daughter, within our home, by the hand of your guard… You would have such _audacity_!”

“Swor- erk”

“Monsters are not held to oaths, Tsar.”

“Please,” Some slack must have been garnered due to flagging attention, the silver dimmed as the smile thinned to a frown. “we could bring her back… as…”

“As some _servant_ , some _slave_ , never mind the pretty title, you’d make it demeaning.  She was a traitor, refusing to follow, and orders are orders.”  A whimper, attention regrouped the grip came back and acquired something o and edge if the cuts spawning on the man’s neck were anything to go by.   “I’m well aware your little pet project and the fact that it’s in its inception stage. “

The body lifted as the dark drew it higher.  To the outsider there would only be sense of stillness broken, the room was that dark.  A mere closet tucked in a hall between some important here and there.  But since, since _after,_ the Tsar and his shadowy associate could hardly meet out in the open.  So a compromise of sorts had been indulged.

More gurgle than syllable, the man tried and failed to get the last word.  A snap and telling stillness after warned the knowledgeable that there were no more coming.

To those not so knowing… well a monster could make a compromise of his own.

With a flick of his hand he set the carrion out from the dark. Through the doors that had been sealed with an order and a lock.  Wood splintered under the force of the throw, and dark pealed out from its place to brave the blazing night of day.

The dark was armed with a scythe, so the guards who’d rushed to investigate the noise would say.  It had a face of a fallen hero, and its steps left stuff that sizzled.  Substance from night that burned under the day.  That and the disfigured corpse of a king were all it left in its wake.

That and nightmares for those who’d seen it it’s coming, it’s killing…

Nightmare that would follow them for the rest of their lives.


	2. His Little Girl

Heroics, like genius, did not flow in the blood.  One could not simply say “ah that hue, well that shade of red means...” not that it didn’t stop them from trying.  From jamming people into roles, and roles into niches, and chalk it all up to breeding

It made even less sense to limit them due to form or frame.

So he didn’t.  His ranks reflected his morals.  Both men and women served him.  Those enlightened and not.

To those who complained, who said that they fought for the light, and thus must only be served by the most enlightened, he’d had but one reply.

“One cannot build a path across heaven with only luminance; there is a matter of foundation, of strength.”

XXX

She broke free from the restraining grip of her caretaker with a loud, uncivilized, whoop.

“Father’s home.  Here, home!”  Never mind the scowling lady had working eyes.  “Father, father!”

His laugh, all delight to match her own, was more than enough to fell expectations of decorum.

She wore light dresses, all airy and flowing.  Indicating she’d spent the day inside, or was meant to.  The flap of her sandals as she flew for him confirmed the obvious.  She’d hardly adhered to the Governess’ expectations. Then she was there, in his arms, for he knelt and braced, was more than ready for impact.

“Father!”

“My light..”

Small arms linked about his neck.  She smelled of sunlight and crushed grass –he’d spied stains about her knees, more than confirming his guess- as he picked her up, held her close.

She flashed a wide smile, baring guns and teeth indiscriminately.

“Home!”

He hummed an affirmative, careful never to say that it was for good, or how long he’d stay.  No matter how he ached to affirm the former he couldn’t.  So he didn’t.  Simply spinning her about and listening to her trills of joy.

“My lord.”  She’d waited, opportunistic thing, to bow when he was orienting himself.  He managed a nod, a slight smile, and wondered.

Wondered how what he was saying, what he did, how it would be taken and told.

“Governess Sesillia, good morning.”

“I trust your efforts went well G-“

A glare, even over when delivered over his daughter’s shoulder, was enough to still the query.  He never talked about his duty when away from the Field.  It was a rule all his staff either obeyed or disobeyed and were discharged for their folly.

“Scritchy.”  Small hands patted his face, pulling his attention from the woman back to where it belonged.

“Your mother didn’t approve when I skipped shaving either.”  He sighed.

“Moma?”

“Moma’s not home, sweetheart... she isn’t home yet.”

She was still too young to grasp death.  “Not home” would do, until she scrapped up the courage to ask when…

Then, much later he hoped (never he prayed) he would have to begin to explain.  About eternity, and never, and finality.

Ironic, so close to life he could think of death…

XXX

It was an echo, really, with just a touch of reversal to make it bitter rather than sweet.  He’s slipped form shadow to shadow, daring the fading light of day and all its bloody burning hues in his budding desperation.  Each shadow was set to whispering her name.  He looked here and there, and then when he found her…

When he found her, he gathered her still form against his, and the shadows screeched, giving voice to his inarticulate grief.

Only when he was gone, and returned, and his temper was somewhat evened did he dare approach her.  The lengthening dark made things... difficult, still he throttled down temptation.  Claws that were hands, that shifted back and forth, with those he combed and cleaned out each strand of hair, working digits in place of a comb.  For a while he braided, wound, and twined the familiar ebony threads. Chattering as if this was normal, if he kept his eyes carefully adverted he could prolong the pretend that abutted against delusion.  Still reality reminded him, and when the iron stink of blood made illusion impossible he closed her eyes with trembling fingers.

And got to the grimmer tasks that were expected of him.

He scraped away the coagulating span of red, stealing bits and pieces from the servants supplies, shaking them out of dust, then setting them to work.  Soon the floors and her side were no longer moist. The stains were impossible to excise, so the tear that had stolen her life was obscured.  Last was her face, he covered it, as was proper her rank and unmarried status, with a length of white silk.

For a while, while the shadows deepened and the stars surly dimmed, he stood silent watch.  No one would check, not immediately.  A day, possibly two, then some goodly inclined busybody would wonder and worry and…

And until then, until that last moment, he had no plans.

Eternity lay before him, less than a year, less than a year into the thick of it, and he wanted nothing more than to end it all.

Looking down at her, seeing death… something niggled, something gnawed.

Not fury, he’d excised that before coming in her presence.  He wouldn’t sully her with his darkling rages, like as before he never sullied her with his work.  Segregating work and him, General and Man, with firm barriers that had –until this end- been insurmountable, they’d been meant to keep her safe….  So, no, this wasn’t rage least the topmost layer of the stuff.  No, it wasn’t fury.

But it twisted and twined, like a fey serpent, grating him with unspeakable impossibilities, a queer lightness….

Hours ticked by as he pursued his mental quarry.  Wind unfelt whispered by, unmoving, for what shad bowed to the wind?  The sole light in the room, the golden pin pricks that served him as eyes, winked out as he thought and reached and remembered.

Something of life, of opportunity.

A fallen king’s (Never his, he’d never bow again!  A swallow, he reigned in his fury by the barest of margins) last words,

“We could bring her back.”

His rebuttal;  “As a servant”, a servant to some world.  He’s heard the theories, the efforts.  The half whispered plans that the common never knew or dreamed existed.  They could be as gods, with technologies and those willing to serve as figurehead to the Celestial Kingdom’s whims… they could, with careful planning, lead those of dark into light.

After all, were they not the most enlightened of them all?

Had any dared ask him, had he dared be candidly asked and his answer truthfully accepted, had there been courage in protocol’s place, he’d have denied and denounced them all.

Looking down, at his dead daughter he knew he should have.

“Never again.”  His voice, though strange, was his.  His to speak the unspeakable, it was a start of a plan.  A beginning of sorts.  “I promise.”  He knelt took her hand, one quick squeeze though she’s never feel it. “This won’t be for nothing.”

His mind was filled with lines.  Lines he could cross, lines he would cross. Shade could not be caged with bars.  You could not contain dark, nor nightmares, nor dire thoughts.  He was all of these and worse, for he was still stumbling about his limits and thus far had found none.

Loosening his hold, he guided her flaccid limb so it lay over her heart, over where his had resided as well.

Never again silent, never again just _accepting_ he resolved.  Letting go, leaving his thoughts of death, he twiddled the idea of a promise that had just begun.

He could, if he made his campaign protracted enough, assuage the masses into thinking the war was all over.  Tucking his shadows into the corners of the cosmos he would be free for a time to do as he needed. Slip into their homes, their labs, supervise their efforts, guild them just so.

Dreams could be such a wonderful inspiration.

And when the time was right… he could tip the subtle forces of those dreams, a twiddle of his fingers, a breath of malice…  He could make dreams into nightmares, after harvesting what he needed from their inspiration, of course.

Smiling, unseeing, he looked beyond the death before him, a thrill, like anticipation, settling into his blood.

He could… _would_ … make this work.  He _had_ to.

His daughter’s life was on the line.

And he’d do anything, everything, for his little girl.


	3. All that was left

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I initially just wanted to tackle the idea of "why is it that when you swear you put something down that it migrates to the oddest of places.." and it spiraled out of control from there. Oh well, enjoy.

When he recalled his home he would not think of the spires of silver and white as snow stone that was the norm.  He would not think of the dizzying view down, that were stark du to the harshness of illumination meeting a color which projected al light.  The synthetic mountains and frosted glass windows, I’s silver accents made vibrant by angle and illumination were never spoken about.  The immaculate gardens and their fantastic flora were blurs of color, a painter’s pallet glimpsed in passing, the masterpiece uncared for and only noted as softer than the norm when he trod over it.

Voices, scents, sounds, sights, all dissolved before the apathetic regard.  There but never cherished.  Only recalled in the driest of terms when asked after and when whim made him want to reply.

He never looked back with fondness.

All he could recall was the order.

He would recall the order with something like awe.  Though the top most spires were arches with silvery crescents and the glass orbs atop all but glowed under the most modest of illumination… the whole was built upon the uninspiring morass of blocks.  From largest to smallest, it seemed a precarious pile to build the grandiose against such small quarters the humble were made to inhabit.  Though they did, those mad mad fools.

The merest tide could send it tumbling down.  Ripe wide the flawed foundations, and in idle moments, under the suns gentle light, he had fantasized ways to fix things.  Though unaesthetic and unappealing (steal wasn’t as glorious as silver, though it was sturdier, by far) to the artistic taste a few beams there, a few supports here…

Now, under the sunless, soothing dark he looked upon the piles and dwelled on the best way to send it tumbling down.

XXX

He lingered in corners, somehow though aware of his true mass he was exempt of the laws such mass and structure would impede.  He was, of a certain height, a certain width, yet he was presently contained within a rectangular patch of shadow from a table’s leg.  Said shadow stretched a mere foot or so in height and length.  Its depth was… insubstantial, merely being the byproduct of mass and illumination it was incalculable.

Yet in its confined he safely resided, whole, unhindered, and listening.

He listened of theories and lunch breaks, of food supped and pitiful gossip.  Not able to bring matter with him (that had led to a slew of misadventures, misplaced pens, paper, and luckily some young novice in training taking the blame for what he’d inadvertently “dropped”) when tucked within the impossible confines he remembered as best he could, and when they were gone… well some hissing sound in the hallway set the custodians to investigate.  Once their loutish steps were far enough he slipped from the shadow, stretched it as the laws of mass and density reasserted themselves and he staggered out from under a table with only a thump and curse to announce his presence.

He’d never get used to traveling like this, missed doors and simply walking… but... such simple pleasures were not for such as him.  So, though it sullied his black stained remnants of robes and glory with dust bunnies he crept from the dark.

Snapping up the pen and scraps of paper he’d left jammed up against the table’s leg and the wall he got to work.

He didn’t understand, not all of it, but be damned if he didn’t write it all down.

So like a ghost, he drifted from room from room. Taking notes, and names, recalling conversations.  What he could he stuffed into his pockets and dared both him and his work to the void when he dove into shadows from here to.. to whatever abandoned unused crevice he could claim as his own.  When he couldn’t, or when in his feverish efforts and long nights he lost track he took steeper risks.  Disguising his efforts among litter and scraps, he stuffed it amongst the trash and spent the next night frantically scrabbling amongst the trash before they turned on the incinerator at dawn.

As with the incidents with the paper and pen there had been errors.  Mistakes.  He’s lost a day’s worth and more to the fires simply by mistiming and unchecked zeal.

He’s lost so much more…

Squelching down on his loss he ground his teeth forgetting in that moment he had fangs instead of...  The nip of pain, the taste of blood, both served as a rebuke, but considering the miasma in trash and spilled content of the bags at his feet it wasn’t much of a blow.

With a snarl he threw something long, and slimy and wet to the side, cursing when the square smeared bit of parchment underneath had a familiar slant to it.  _His_ slant, _his_ handwriting.  When had people stopped learning to read?  Put paper here, _paper only, recyclables_ , it wasn’t that hard to understand!   The bins had been clearly marked, Darkness, the _bags_ had been marked. Still, though the first few pages were a loss (one he shredded with extreme prejudice) the body of the text was salvageable. So he salvaged, holding it, folding it, he stuffed the first few pages in his pockets and pressed the body of his efforts to his breast.

What was on him stayed on him, but what wasn’t would be lost.  Unacceptable.  So though it wasn’t for him any longer he padded up the stairway and found, as before, an odd eeriness to the whole.

His steps made no sound. 

A rush of recklessness made him drag one foot, kick at the stone.  Nothing and nothing.  With a shiver he tried the door, unlocked, small mercies there.  It was only when he pushed it open that he was rewarded with a small hint of noise.  A squeak, minimal resistance, and he’s in a hall. Shadows saturate the very floors, obscuring their natural hue in a wash of gloom.

Gloom that pulls, that nips and tugs at his ankles, beckoning him to step down, to take that first impossible step down, to bypass mass and…

And with gritted teeth he marched forward.  Not down. Least he lose what he’s taken.  He holds it tight, surely deforming the whole, but he needs the reminder least he sink.

Pressing against the walls helps, here and there there are windows, frosted and tinted silver to boot, but they let some of the star light in, and in the presence of light the temptation to sink isn’t as strong.

So though it was the oddest of buoys he held to paper and light fast. Slinking across stone instead of sinking into the pores and nicks that time and nature had left behind was an effort, so much so that he was panting by the time he’d crossed five feet.  By the time he managed the incalculable distance of beyond five and managed the first step up the stair way of three and a door beyond the third, he had to stop.  Not daring to lean on the wall, one foot upon shoddily illuminated elevation, the other held fast by some eager thread of shade.

Still he bent, and wrapped his hand about his ankle, pulling and tugging against the adamant dark.

“Let…go!”

He could have sworn something whispered at his command, whimpered, but the words were beyond his understanding.

  A thud, from behind, back from where he came.  He wrenched about in panic forgetting his predicament.  Reality was quick to fix that.  His fall was the same as everything else, soundless.  Mercifully he was able to twist about as he went down, finding precarious purchase on the second step in his sprawl.   Hissing a few curses he waited and watched, seeing not the flash of armor that such a ruckus should entail but some large rounded frame.  The dark was no barrier, though a goodly distance away he was able to pick out enough details to deduce the basics.  A man, a civilian, the uniform proclaimed him to be lower caste, the script on his shoulder marking him as a menial worker of the institute.

The flashlight in his hands was a headache inspiring nuisance.

A sentiment _something_ , shared.  The presence about his ankle hissed and greatly daring he reached down, setting fingers over a swell in the shadows.  The snarl dimmed to a whimper as the thing shivered against his touch.

He could have cried, so sharp was his frustration.  Mere steps away, the door, leading up, leading out, and he was anchored to the dark, being accidentally his with light.  He snarled, ached to just get up and take the exit at a rush.  Snatching the papers he waited, waited while the door was closed, while the light swept closer and closer.

And as it approached the dark screamed.  He could feel it, _feel_ the vibrations rattling around his head and he nearly choked at the awful sensation that was burning sans fire, nausea, weakness, and agony without respite for he dared not close his eyes.  Closer, closer, the man crept on tip toe, spooking at perfectly harmless dark.  He’d of laughed if not for the pain, dared not laugh least he scream.  At last it was only the stairs that were left unchecked.  Light skittered over him, there and gone, and it was pain and he grit fang and tasted blood and waited…

Waited for the scream, the exclamation, waited for something…

For anything.

The light dimmed, flicked off as the man holding it muttered something about too hot.

_Hot , the man knew nothing or burning, of pain, and if it weren’t for the whimpering thing about his ankle he’d learn.  Oh he’d learn!_

Half mad, that thought.  He shook as he waited.  Eyes widening in horror as he went unseen.  Was walked though, unseen, unheard, though he protested, hissed as one foot carelessly trod though what felt the whole of him.

And that burned as had everything else, burned and displaced, and he writhed under the force of fresh agony.  Papers fell, unheeded, to the floor.

Then, nothing.  The door opened, the man was there, then gone.

And he hadn’t seen a thing.

Not one thing!

When the screaming stopped, his unheard, unnoticed, when the writhing stilled, when he could be still, he managed a sketchy sort of sitting up.  Snapping up efforts he cradled them to his chest, rocking back and forth.  Nothing held him down now; the fool had trod on the _whatever_ and more than likely killed it in carelessness.

Nothing held him down, but he felt no urge to get up.  Not yet, not now.

So he sat on the steps, in some forgotten hallway, sobbing. Holding the remnants of efforts for some plan whose point he couldn’t recall, held on to the proof of an existence he couldn’t comprehend.  Holding all that was left of himself, he cried.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long... But it was hard to get this chapter out. I'm hoping now that I've got two characters where I want them the rest will come easier and we can have some progress...

Oaths and Monsters

Words on the Wall

 

There would be no triumphant return.  To normalcy, to life.  He accepted the grim fact which was permanence.  He was growing into his oddness… this oddness… that his presence existence engendered.

But it held nothing compared to… compared to _this_.

Ringed round and round by stolen pages and pictures, (some done by his hand, some done by mechanical recording devices half in half out of stray pieces of shade…) he stared at something beyond treason.

He hadn’t understood it, didn’t understand why, and its contorted contraptions were beyond his comprehension.

The tangible response to those contraptions… well those had been stilled by his blade.

Stilled and locked away, then opened again.

All it had taken was one moment’s madness.

But this _… this_ …

This went beyond treason, beyond a moment…

_Antitheses_

The word flittered about in his mind.  Four syllables, divorced of any other thought, it remained an unconnected beginning to nowhere that went nowhere fast.

Ringed round be paper, he stared at the fragments of what was, and wondered, if he dared the sunlight, if he’d spy the encroaching decay that must surly take all.

XXX

The writings began, nothing on the cameras, a moments fizzle and spit of static, one moment, two…

A word or two would be scrawled in return.

Each stolen moment was exchanged for a scrawl of gibberish upon some board in a far off room.  Never the main, never the lit.  So far of, this occasional vandal, for the visits weren’t daily… nightly… whatever was simply writing to write.  At least that’s what his superiors had said.  They’d shrugged it off, at least until some semblance of legibility had been gained by their nocturnal visitor.  Until the first words that could be understood.

Solar systems, one listed after the other.  A celestial trail that lead to nowhere.  That fact had been realized when some busy body scientist with nothing else to do had grumped about the spelling of one cosmos.  Granted the misspelling may have been illegibility encroaching back, taking its break away of coherence and blurring and edge, but the throwaway comment had been made as some custodian had brushed off the victimized board.

Gossip started, had been running, and wagers had been made.  A pool or three had formed, some centered about identity, others about topic, others about coherence, another centering upon capture.  It’d been a harmless faction, an underbelly of high intellect society that had too much time to think and far too little to do…

As if galvanized, and aware of words whispered in dark corners, the rooms where the would-be-gamblers gathered was next.

A few words, a half sentence, and the world changed.

One scramble later, one hushed conference from the powers that be… those that remained… because the darkness had taken the top, so it was whispered in the corners where those in power couldn’t hear…  And orders were given, guards were rolled out.  Uniformed, with a pseudo military snap to their step, a baton and flashlight wielded in place of sword and shield.  They prowled unoffending dark, absently offending the dark all unknowingly.

The response to their presence was scrawled upon each board in every room before the first night was done.

“Amateur, Insolent, Lazy, Inept…”  Small hands flipped through the photos, raising a gold eyebrow as he went along.  The last “Oblivious” had been written over the frame of a sprawled snoring guard, his predecessor obviously.  The youngest guard, first night out of training, first night out of three days bunking in a building that might have passed as an academy had it tried and it’s people cared to take it seriously, hummed the criticisms , rocking upon his heels, smiling wider and wider.  “Seriously, they’re _worried_ about this?  Seems like a sneaky kid with a bit of snark.”

“We’re paid to worry about this, Mr. ManSnoozle.”  His superior drawled. Huffing a sigh at the mispronunciation, ManSnooz _ie_ decided not to bother with a correction. “Also, sign here and here.”  Two contracts, one the usual universal policies on refraining from violence unless it was the last resort he scribbled his name over without a thought.  The last… the last he didn’t sign at all.

The first paragraph stopped his hand, and he went down the rest, disbelieving.

“Seriously?”  He whispered.  “Execution?”

“Clearly they’re doing something, and even reading a line about that something… is enough to warrant capital punishment.”

Gold eyes met brown, junior considered senior.

“All we need is for you to fill in, for a week, that’s’ it, just walk some rooms, and look about, one week than we get you somewhere… not so high profile, hmm?”

“One week.”

A nod, a promise.

“Alight then.”

A few scratches, a few symbols more sigil than anything else…

One, _Sanderson ManSnooize_ , and all accidentally his fate was sealed.


End file.
